Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown EarthCache

Owens Lake was a perennial lake at the terminus of the Owens River. Throughout historic time; the lake held water continuously, and at times overflowed to the south, for at least the last 800,000 years. During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the lake fluctuated between about 7-15 m deep and had an area of about 280 km2. Try to imagine that in the late 1800s, steamboats hauled ore across the lake from mines in the Inyo Range!

In 1845 John C. Fremont named the Owens valley, river and lake for Richard Owens, one of his guides. Camp Independence was established on Oak Creek nearby modern Independence, California on July 4, 1862, during the Owens Valley Indian War.

Owens Valley is a graben (a downdropped block of land between two vertical faults). Owens Valley is the westernmost graben in the Basin and Range Province. It is also part of a trough which extends from Oregon to Death Valley called the Walker Lane. The western flank of much of the valley has large moraines coming off the Sierra Nevada. These unsorted piles of rock, boulders, and dust were bulldozed to where they are by glaciers during the last ice age. An excellent example of a moraine is on State Route 168 as it climbs into Buttermilk Country. This graben was formed by a long series of earthquakes, such as the 1872 Lone Pine earthquake, that have moved the graben down and helped move the Sierra Nevada up. The graben is in fact much larger than the depth of the valley suggests; gravity studies suggest that 10,000 feet (3,048.0 m) of sedimentary rock mostly fills the graben and that a very steep escarpment is buried under the western length of the valley. The topmost part of this escarpment is exposed at Alabama Hills.

In the early 20th century the valley became the scene of a struggle between local residents and the city of Los Angeles over water rights. There was even a movie produced in 1990 that cronicled the "shady" events leading up to the construction of the aqueducts. Water was first diverted from the Owens River to the City of Los Angeles in 1913. William Mulholland, superintendent of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) planned the 223 miles (359 km) Los Angeles Aqueduct, completed in 1913, which diverted water from the Owens River. Much of the water rights were acquired through subterfuge, with purchases splitting water cooperatives and pitting neighbors against each other. The purchases led to anger among local farmers, which erupted in violence in 1924, when parts of the water system were sabotaged by local farmers. By 1926 Owens Lake was dry leaving the present alkali flat which plagues the southern valley with alkali dust storms.

In 1970, LADWP completed a second aqueduct from Owens Valley. More surface water was diverted and groundwater was pumped to feed the aqueduct. Owens Valley springs and seeps dried and disappeared, and groundwater-dependent vegetation began to die.

Years of litigation followed. In 1997, Inyo County, Los Angeles, the Owens Valley Committee, the Sierra Club, and other concerned parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding that specified terms by which the lower Owens River would be re-watered by June 2003. LADWP missed this deadline and was sued again. Under another settlement, this time including the State of California, Los Angeles promised to re-water the lower Owens River by September 2005. In February 2005, LADWP announced it was unlikely to meet this extended deadline.

The dry bed of Owens Lake has produced enormous amounts of windblown dust since the desiccation of the lake. The term "Keeler fog" (for the town on the east side of the lake was coined locally decades ago for the pervasive, unusually fine-grained, alkaline dust that infiltrates the smallest cracks and contaminates residences. The lake bed is the largest single source of PM10 dust (aerosol particles smaller than 10 microns in aerodynamic diameter) in the United States. As reported in the Los Angeles Times (12/17/96): "One day last year in Keeler, particles surged to a nationwide record that was 23 times greater than a federal health standard allows. Keeler residents are exposed to unhealthful levels 25 days a year. In Ridgecrest, 60 miles south of the lake, that situation occurs 10 days a year, according to the Great Basin air agency.

In Summary, the artificial desiccation of Owens Lake has created the single largest source of PM-10 dust in the United States. Dust storms from the dry lake bed are a significant health hazard to residents of Owens Valley and nearby areas, and impact air quality in a large region around the lake bed. Salt-rich dust derived from the Owens Lake playa is deposited in significant quantities, much larger than those elsewhere in southern Nevada and California, to distances of at least 40 km north and south of the playa. The dust-flux measurements indicate that significant quantities of salt-rich dust are probably being added to the soils in the region around Owens Lake playa, which may affect soil pH and vegetation. Owens Lake is an extreme example of the potentially destabilizing effect on land surfaces and vegetation by the extraction of surface and ground water in desert regions.

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